Amazon beats out Walmart on value

The value perception gap between Amazon and Walmart among low income online shoppers is growing wider in the US.

Perception of Walmart, which has always positioned itself as having the lowest prices, began to decline in April among this lower to moderate income / online shopper demographic. At the same time, the growing desire and convenience of shopping online has worked in Amazon’s favor, which offers many of Walmart’s products and more, with the potential of free shipping and no sales tax.

In the two years since both brands split apart in value perception, Amazon has steadily climbed while Walmart has eroded. Walmart recently suffered nine consecutive quarters of declining same store sales until six months ago. However, in its most recent quarter, overall earnings again declined – 13%. Since last May, Walmart has been snapping up Internet companies to better compete on the e-commerce battlefront.

Walmart and Amazon were measured with YouGov BrandIndex’s Value score, which asks respondents: "Does it give good value for what you pay?" Results were filtered for adults 18+ who make an annual income of $50,000 or less and are Internet shoppers.

From early 2008 through the first quarter of 2010, Amazon led Walmart in value perception with lower to moderate income Internet shoppers, but often not by a wide measure. However, the game changed on March 20, 2010, a brief time when Walmart was actually ahead with a score of 53 compared to Amazon’s 48.

From there, Walmart’s value score has declined significantly, currently at 22, less than half of where it was in March 2010. Over the same period of time, Amazon has soared to a current score of 71.